ByteAsk Raises $1M for C++ AI Coding Agents
AI coding startup ByteAsk has raised $1 million in a round led by Y Combinator and Entrepreneur First, with participation from angel investors. Founded in June 2026, the company is building AI coding agents for C and C++ developers working in high-stakes industries such as defence, aerospace, robotics, high-frequency trading, automotive and semiconductors.
Tackling the gap in C and C++ development
The founders said they started ByteAsk after seeing limitations in the performance of generic AI coding tools on C and C++, particularly in environments where reliability, performance and correctness are critical.
"Seeing AI transform software development while C and C++ developers still struggle with the limitations of generic coding agents made us realise there was a significant gap to address," said Anirudha Kulkarni, cofounder and CEO of ByteAsk.
From LawSutra AI to ByteAsk
Kulkarni and Pratyush Saini cofounded legal AI startup LawSutra AI, which was acquired by legal research company Manupatra within four months of its launch. Both founders are IIT Delhi computer science graduates.
"Building LawSutra taught us that models are only as useful as the context, verification and workflows around them. At ByteAsk, we are applying that same philosophy to code," Kulkarni added.
Newsletter
The corridor, every morning.
Funding rounds and cross-border capital moves, one email, five minutes.
Saini said: "C and C++ power a huge amount of the world's critical infrastructure, but the gains we've seen from AI coding tools have not translated equally well to these environments. We wanted to work on a problem where reliability, verification and context matter as much as generation."
Product and expansion plans
ByteAsk said engineers are using its product approximately six times more intensively each day than a comparable open-source coding agent, while its weekly active users are doubling week-on-week. On its internal benchmark of real firmware engineering tickets, the company said its smaller model resolves 89% of tickets, compared with 61% for the best frontier model tested without the environment.
ByteAsk plans to use the fresh capital to expand its engineering and research teams across San Francisco and Bengaluru, invest in GPU compute and training data, and build enterprise-grade security, privacy and on-premises infrastructure for customers in sensitive industries. The company plans to initially focus on large firms in high-frequency trading, automotive and embedded systems before expanding into adjacent markets.
The startup is also developing its own post-training approach for C++, with the aim of releasing one of the first language models specifically post-trained for the language within the next six to eight months.
Nemil Dalal, visiting partner at Y Combinator, said: "When applying to Y Combinator for ByteAsk, what stood out about Anirudha and Pratyush was their passion, authenticity, and technical expertise. They saw a large group of software developers that were left out of current AI coding tools and had figured out how to make them more productive."
More in Funding
